The Squirrel

It’s the squirrel I keep seeing behind my closed lids as we begin to kiss, begin to go under into that realm of I don’t care, not now, not while her hands are on me. The squirrel. And the, Janet said. Every marriage has its division of labor. But I wasn’t sure it couldn’t recover. You’ve seen three-legged dogs that trot along happily. Is it better to suffer a slow death or a quick violent one? I called our son. I could hear he was tired, just home from the farm and the baby clingy. , he said. We’d slaughtered and skinned rabbits together. But I didn’t trust my speed on a frantic target. , I told Janet. Russia bombed a hospital today and in the Times a bloodied pregnant woman lay on a stretcher in the subfreezing air. Then, two paragraphs in, Neiman Marcus pops up selling a purse for $2,690. It comes in black and olive. Reviews say the olive is gorgeous. And my own daughter’s body is attacking itself. She’s losing her vision. Humans are good at denial. There are still places that don’t name a baby until its first birthday. But tonight the squirrel is the soloist in the orchestra of suffering. , I say to Janet. If I crush some in peanut butter the squirrel will either die or slow down enough that I can risk the shovel. I go out searching with a flashlight, but no squirrel. It’s possible it has risen up out of death’s socket like that logger in rural Pennsylvania whose leg got trapped under a tree. He cut it off at the knee with a pocketknife, crawled to his bulldozer, drove the bulldozer to his pickup and the pickup to the house of a farmer. , he said. We decide to go back to kissing. I board up my mind, pound in the nails. My eyes close. My blood hammers.